• Court hears how containers were found to be made up of illegal household waste
• Droitwich recycling site used as base before waste taken to Felixstowe and Southampton ports

The Environment Agency has successfully prosecuted a former company director for illegally exporting banned household waste including nappies, clothing, textiles, tins and electrical items from a site in Droitwich, Worcestershire, to Indonesia in 2019.

At Kidderminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday 10 August 2022, Tianyong Wang, 43, of Welcombe Grove, Solihull, Warwickshire, was fined £1,200 and ordered to pay costs of £10,000.

He had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing in April 2022 to causing his dissolved company Berry Polymer Limited to export the waste to Indonesia. Shipping documents described the waste as plastic, which can be exported to Indonesia for recycling.

Howard McCann, prosecuting for the Environment Agency, told the court that between 27 June and 5 July 2019, Wang had caused his company to export some 382 tonnes of household waste in 22 sea containers from its site in Droitwich via the ports of Felixstowe and Southampton to Indonesia.

Included in the waste were about 1,590 nappies or sanitary items, plus 1,338 electrical items and about 33,639 tins/cans.

Other contaminants included numerous items of clothing, textiles and rags, unopened plastic bags, glass, wood, golf balls, toys, a used toilet brush and contaminated food and drink cartons.

Mr McCann told the court that the defendant was the sole director of Berry Polymer Limited, a company which was dissolved on 24 August 2021, at the time of the offending.

Wang had agreed to sell some 500 tonnes of plastic bottle waste to a broker at £270 per tonne. A purchase order confirmed the load site of the waste as “Berry Polymer Limited, 20 The Furlong Droitwich WR9 9AH.” Berry Polymer invoiced the broker £103,210.20 for 382.26 tonnes of “plastic bottles.”

The offence was discovered by Environment Agency officers who conducted initial inspections of some of the 22 containers at the ports of Southampton (17 containers) and Felixstowe (5) on 4 July 2019.

These inspections recorded significant evidence of contamination, flies and, in some containers, a rotting decomposing smell.

The containers were deemed unfit for export at that stage and prevented from onward shipment to Indonesia.

Five of the containers were transported to the Environment Agency’s inspection facility at Felixstowe for full examination, one of the bales examined was so bad that an officer was physically sick.

Ultimately all the containers were returned to the site in Droitwich for reprocessing.

When interviewed, Wang, who was abroad at the time, said the material supplied was not as described because his company’s usual bale inspection had either not happened or was sub-standard.

In sentencing, District Judge Strongman said this was a “blunder” by Wang, which had cost him his business and his reputation.

Sham Singh, senior investigating officer for the Environment Agency, said:

This prosecution sends out a strong message that we will investigate and where necessary prosecute anyone found to be involved in illegally exporting waste.

Waste crime can have a serious environmental impact and puts communities at risk. It undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that goes with it.

We support legitimate businesses and are proactively supporting them by disrupting and stopping the illegal waste exports.

If anyone suspects that a company is doing something wrong, please contact the Environment Agency on 0800 80 70 60 or report it anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

The charge

That Tianyong Wang, as the director of Berry Polymer Limited (company number 11887373 – dissolved), through your consent, connivance or neglect, and by virtue of Regulation 55(1) of the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007, between 27 June and 5 July 2019, you caused that company to commit the offence of transporting waste specified in Article 36(1)(b) of the European Waste Shipments Regulation 1013/2006, namely 22 containers of waste collected from households, that were destined for recovery in Indonesia, a country to which the OECD Decision does not apply, contrary to Regulation 23 of the Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations 2007.

Background

The export of waste collected from households to non-OECD (Organisation for Economic and Development) countries is prohibited by Article 36 of the Waste Shipment Regulations.

The offence of transporting waste to a non-OECD country in breach of the prohibition is created by Regulation 23 and the directors’ offence by regulation 55(1) of the TFS Regulations 2007. The offence is one of strict liability.

A shipment of waste starts at the point of loading in the country of dispatch and continues until the waste has been recovered at the facility in the country of destination. This is why the export is not regarded as an attempt, despite the containers being prevented from leaving Felixstowe and Southampton.

For waste to be categorised as green list such as plastic waste, it must have been collected separately or been properly sorted.

Properly sorted means that the sorting is sufficient to remove contaminants to the point where any contamination that remains is so small as to be minimal and does not prevent the waste from becoming green list waste.

• Contributions will inform an independent review into potential bias in all types of medical devices and the impact on patients from different socio-demographic groups
• The call aims to collect evidence and insights regarding potential and known equity issues and solutions to these issues across the entire life cycle of medical devices
• Academics, researchers, health professionals, engineers and device developers, as well as patients and general public, are invited to contribute

The Independent Review has launched a call for evidence to gather insights from experts and organisations, as well as patients and the general public, on the potential racial and gender bias of medical devices.

Through commissioning the Independent Review on Equity in Medical Devices led by Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, the government is seeking to tackle disparities in healthcare. This consultation will support this by gathering new evidence on if and how medical devices and technologies may be biased against patients of different ethnicities, genders and other socio-demographic groups, and what solutions could mitigate these biases.

Through the call for evidence, which will be open for 8 weeks, it hopes to hear from those who work most closely with medical devices such as oxygen measuring devices and infrared scanners and other medical software and hardware, including databases and instructions for medical devices. This applies across a device’s entire life cycle – from evaluation to marketing and implementation – to identify potential biases and solutions at each and every stage.

For example, some devices employing infrared light or imaging may not perform as well with patients with darker skin pigmentation, which has not been accounted for in the development and testing of the devices when patients with only a limited range of lighter skin tones were recruited.

The independent review, which the call for evidence will feed into, aims to improve equity in medical devices and help tackle existing healthcare disparities, ensuring people can receive the best-possible care throughout their patient experience regardless of their ethnicity or gender.

Health Minister Gillian Keegan said:

I am committed to ensuring all patients receive high-quality, innovative healthcare without discrimination.

The independent review is part of our vital work to tackle healthcare inequalities, and I invite the industry to share their expertise in the call for evidence so we can ensure medical devices are free of any form of bias.

Members of expert and professional groups and organisations, including academics, researchers, engineers, healthcare professionals and industry representatives, are invited to submit evidence and insights regarding potential disparities and proposed solutions, with this evidence informing the independent review.

Members of the public, patients and carers can also contribute their views and insights on these topics.

Research suggests the way some medical devices are designed and used may be failing to account for differences related to ethnic background, gender or other characteristics – potentially exacerbating existing inequalities in healthcare.

While current UK regulations set out clear expectations on medical devices and technologies, they do not currently include provisions to ensure that medical devices are working equally well for different groups in the population based on their social or demographic characteristics.

The independent review will cover different types of medical devices, including devices enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) used in diagnosing illness and determining therapy pathways, as well as risk-scoring systems using genomics to make decisions about personalised medicine.

It will consider in what ways existing or future regulations could successfully address any biases in medical devices that arise at any stage of their design, development, evaluation, implementation and use.

Patients can be reassured that the NHS is expert in providing the best possible care, and the review is intended to accelerate the process of improving the quality and availability of medical devices to diverse communities.

Professor Dame Margaret Whitehead, chair of the independent review, said:

We aim to establish where and how potential ethnic and other unfair biases may arise in the design and use of medical devices, and what can be done to make improvements.

We especially encourage patients and members of the public, as well as health, technology and industry experts and researchers to share their views and any evidence concerning medical devices in order to help us tackle inequalities in healthcare.

The review chair will issue the panel’s report to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care setting out clear options for consideration by spring 2023 with interim findings expected in winter 2022.

Call for evidence: Equity in medical devices: independent review call for evidence.

See Equity in medical devices: independent review for the review’s terms of reference, biographies of the panel members and details on how to contribute to the review outside of the call for evidence through the review mailbox.